The Memnon Incident: Part 2 of 4 (A Serial Novel)

by Marc DeSantis

  Morrigan showed no sign that any such destruction had been contemplated. The emergency escape pods, as well as all of the light craft that such a warship would ordinarily embark, were gone, indicating a thorough and orderly departure. Scans showed that Morrigan's exotic antimatter weapons were still present, carefully sheltered behind thick blast doors protected by impenetrably-enciphered codelocks. There had been no effort made to detonate them and the powerplant was offline. The ship was still perfectly habitable, despite whatever damage it had suffered. What could have made Captain Sidwell get his crew off Morrigan that didn't necessitate her subsequent destruction?

  The voice of Ensign Garand woke More from his reverie. "Incoming transmission, captain," he said. "It's urgent - from Commander Imagawa!"

  Bad news. It had only been a matter of time. More had known that. The extreme distance of Morrigan and his ships made detection of them hard for Memnon. But the RMN had sensor stations deposited everywhere along the outer rim of the system, and they were certain to be tagged eventually. Callisto Imagawa, the best pilot in the RHN, if you asked More, was being chased by at least two dozen fighters of the Memnonian Navy. She and her wingman had already splashed five. Good shooting! Nonetheless, knowing that they had been found at last gave More a queasy feeling. He'd hoped to be on his way before the RMN came looking, but Morrigan was still motionless. Standard procedure in Great Sphere militaries was for pursuing fighters to promptly send a message back to base, or perhaps to a larger ship nearby, to dispatch at least one FTL courier capsule to deliver news of contact with potentially hostile forces. This would also serve as a summons to send additional support. Courier capsules were too short-ranged to be used over interstellar distances, but for intra-system use, they were more than sufficient. More had to assume that had occurred as soon as the Memnonians had spotted Imagawa's recon flight, and that Memnon's admiralty had learned of the RHN's presence by now. It was time to talk tactics.

  "The captains are ready to conference," Ensign Garand called out from his duty station on the bridge.

  "Good," he said. "Relay their transmissions to the ward room. We'll need extra space. They'll be appearing via holopresence. It wouldn't do to have one of my captains emerging from inside a console or stairs." He turned to his executive officer, Vincent Vokey. "XO, you have the conn."

  "Aye, aye, captain."

  The Steadfast's ward room lay just off the bridge, set behind armored doors. Space was always at a premium aboard a warship. Every cubic centimeter devoted to creature comforts, such as head room, or larger cabins, was one that could not be given over to additional propulsion, more or bigger weapons, or stouter armor. The Steadfast had never felt cramped until More had been aboard Morrigan. With its wide corridors and roomy cabins, Morrigan appeared more like a luxury liner than a dedicated vessel of war. Steadfast seemed like a shoebox in comparison. There was room enough, but only just enough.

  One by one his captains began to appear via the holofeed. First came Matt Heyward of Kongo. He was the fiercest of his subordinates. More had often thought that Heyward would have made a fine shark had he not been born human. The loss of Amethyst, Starfire, and Rose had rankled him more than he let on. He was itching to hit back. He'd have been the perfect frigate captain in the days of fighting sail. That aggressiveness would be good in the coming fight. More hoped though that he could avoid a full-scale shooting war with the RMN if he could help it.

  Tommasina Carey of Kestrel materialized next. She was scarcely less ferocious than Heyward, but was a bit more cerebral. She was the patient hunter type, waiting until the perfect moment to pounce. Her favored tactic against pirates was to lie in wait for them to attack a seemingly unprotected merchantman, and then, after they had committed themselves to an attack, to strike.

  The holos of Bill Calder of Cormorant, Tyler Rahal of the Adonis, and Akil Augustine of the Theseus flickered in, completing the little gathering of More's reborn 34th Strike Squadron. Calder was a solid officer. He'd been a huge help assisting in the ongoing operations aboard Morrigan as well as getting the Golden Lion back into fighting shape. Having the Cormorant present alongside Steadfast and Kongo had gone a long way to ease More's many worries about fighting off attackers if it ever came to blows.

  More had known Tyler Rahal from his Academy days at Cold Bay. Rahal had been in the same class as More. Rahal's marks were among best, and he'd had his pick of assignments upon graduation. He chose fighters. Rahal looked every inch the fighter jock, square of jaw, hair closely cropped, and supremely self-confident. Even the scar he'd received in combat with the Ajaxians made him look more ruggedly handsome than before. Most importantly, he knew how to handle fighter squadrons. After commanding Adonis, Rahal would get a planetside assignment at High Command, to be followed soon after by the command of a full-sized fleet carrier. Then, it would be on to flag rank, of that there was no doubt.

  Akil Augustine. More had not seen him in several years. Augustine had been serving with the Third Warfleet rimward of Monongahela, until recently, far from the the void patrolled by More's own Eighth Warfleet. They'd been close as brothers once. Then More had broken off his relationship with Augustine's sister. It had been a messy break-up, and things had never been the same between him and Augustine. That didn't matter right now. Augustine was a skilled officer and had made a great name for himself against the TransGulf raiders. He'd be good in a scrap.

  "Good to see you all," More began. The other captains exchanged their own greetings with More and one another. "I would have wished that this meeting could have been under better circumstances," More said, "but this mission went off the rails a long time ago. Right now, we are under the gun. Morrigan's reactor is still not responsive. The displacement drive needs that power. She does have one functional sublight drive, but without power, we can't get that lit either."

  "In other, words," Carey said, "it is a sitting duck, and Memnon is going to be arriving in force soon."

  "What about hyperbatteries?" Calder asked. "Can we plug enough of them into the maneuver drive to get her moving somehow and hide her deep inside the cloud? She's remained hidden for who knows how long already."

  "We can't risk leaving her behind," replied More, "If Memnon finds her, and we have to assume they will, we'd be handing over the most advanced weapon in the galaxy to a kingdom that is extremely angry at us. We don't know where the tech onboard Morrigan might end up either."

  "I hadn't realized how challenging getting the ship's drive systems to work would be," Rahal said. "I've read the first report that that you made weeks ago. You seemed more optimistic then."

  "I was," More said, "and I had visions of riding triumphantly into spacedock aboard Morrigan. I got carried away. The ship is just too far beyond what we have now. We don't even have modern-era references for some of the systems she has packed in her. The powerplant is too advanced for the limited time and resources we have available. It and the DP drive work on different principles to those we are familiar with, and that makes our job all the more difficult."

  "So . . . I hate to ask this question . . ." Heyward said, "but . . ."

  ". . . are we going to have to scuttle Morrigan?" More finished for the flickering hologram of Heyward.

  "Yeah, something like that," Heyward said. "We're going to have to do something about her."

  "I've been dreading this moment for two months," said More, looking at each of the holographic images around the ward room. "Now it's finally time to decide. We will probably be overwhelmed by the RMN if and when they arrive in force. The fighters tailing my people at this moment, they are just an outer system patrol wing. It is what will be coming in response to their call for help that will be the problem."

  "What are we looking at, Andrew?" asked Augustine.

  "I'm expecting that we are going to be meeting up with three squadrons of system defense gunboats and destroyers, and one carrier, perhaps twenty to twenty-five ships in all, showing up in the next three or four days. It should take that much
time for them to collect them and jump out here. That's what they can spare. They'll have to leave the bulk of their fleet elsewhere to defend their border with Ajax. Most of them will be a technological generation or two behind our own, but that won't matter much. They will have a three- or four-to-one advantage over us." More had a sickening vision of Morrigan exploding into fiery debris across the inky blackness of space. The idea haunted him.

  "We'd have a tough time fighting them if we could engage them in a running battle, using our speed to stay out of range of their guns, hitting them at our own choosing," Rahal said. "With the Morrigan immobile, we will have to go toe-to-toe with them to protect it. That's not the Halifaxian way of naval war."

  "I'd die if I thought that by doing so Morrigan would become the next capital ship acquisition of the Republic of Halifax Navy," Carey said. "I'd order my crew to their deaths if their sacrifice would get us that prize. What I won't do is lead them to their deaths if it only meant that they would die just so that Morrigan would be scuttled right after they were dead, not before. If Memnon shows up with the firepower you expect, it is foolish for us to stay and fight. We've already gotten so much out of the ship. Let's blow it up and get out of here before we are hip deep in our own blood."

  "I'm agreeing with Tommasina on this," a flickering Rahal said. "I'll launch my fighters and send them wherever you want, Andrew, but if the most likely result of any combat will be us destroying Morrigan, we might as well scuttle it before the RMN comes and be long gone by time they do. Golden Lion has its DP drive back online. We can leave right away. The political situation is not irretrievable. What has happened so far? We've taken out a few of their fighters. I doubt Memnon genuinely wants a shooting war over them. Let the diplomats sort this out."

  "Our relations with Memnon are as crappy as they can get without a full-scale war," Augustine added. "The thing to remember is that it is not a war yet. Be happy with what we have recovered from it and blow it up."

  There it was, the odd distinction. For More, Heyward, and Calder, Morrigan was a 'her.' To the newly arrived captains, Carey, Rahal, and Augustine, Morrigan was still an 'it.' They had never been aboard Morrigan, to see what a wonder that she truly was.

  "I don't want to blow her up," Heyward said. "I know I sound possessive, but my people found her. She's mine. I want to keep her. She is going to be my next command."

  There was soft laughter among the holograms populating the ward room. Heyward had devoted himself to ferreting out what he could about the history of the Second Empire. There was not a lot to go on, but he had pieced together a semi-plausible timeline of Morrigan's era from the handful of recovered books and personal writings left behind by the crew. He had become entranced by the ancient history that Morrigan embodied.

  "I feel much the same way, Matt, but I can't allow this squadron to sacrifice itself if we have no chance of saving Morrigan. And besides, you were going to have to wait until I had been her captain before you ever got to sit in the captain's chair." There was more soft laughter. To the other captains, he said, "I anticipated that this would be your suggested course of action and so I have already sent my marine contingent over to begin rigging the ship for demolition. It will take some doing, since the ship is so big, but we should be able to set the remaining subsidiary reactors to overload, and they will be helped along by some well-placed nukes. When the RMN comes, I plan on defending Morrigan until it makes no sense to do so. If it looks like we are going to be on the losing side of any fight, we scuttle her, and emergency displace home."

  "I don't like it," Heyward said, "but I guess that settles it. I'll prep Kongo for whatever comes next. I'll recall my crew from Morrigan, and get them ready either for battle or for cryostasis.

  "Vincent Vokey will have command of the Golden Lion. He'll leave first just in case his rebuilt DP drive has issues he needs help with."

  "It's about time Vokey had his own ship," Carey said. "He's good."

  "I agree," More said. "I think that's everything."

  One by one, the holos began to wink out after taking their leave of More. He had made the only decision he could under the circumstances. He had put the safety of his ships and the strategic security of Halifax above all other considerations. But it still pained him. It would have been the story of the century to ride home in a Second Empire battleship. More closed his eyes. At least this would all be over soon.

  The excited voice of Philip Garand squawked over the the ward room comm. "Captain, do you read?"

  More grew worried. Had Imagawa been caught by her pursuers? "Yes, go ahead, ensign."

  "It's Morrigan, captain - she's talking!"

  "Please tell me she's telling us how to light her powerplant."

  "No details, just got word from Howell, captain."

  "That's not all," Cassandra Feeney cut in. "Ships of the Memnon Navy have just exited hyperspace. We're reading multiple displacement envelopes collapsing all around."

  "How many?"

  "Amy's calculating that now," Feeney replied, "sixty-one . . . sixty-seven . . . seventy-two . . . seventy-seven ships, captain!"

  Seventy-seven. Memnon had not sent a few squadrons to check out what was going on. It had sent the whole of its navy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aboard the Morrigan

  "This is what happens when you leave a civilian to oversee a military operation," Lieutenant Jenkins said. "I told you Howell was a poor choice. Everything goes to hell without the military in charge."

  "Maybe they know that we are going to torch the ship," Sergeant Cone suggested, pointing to the chaotic scene in front of him. "They are all falling over themselves to get off. They didn't bother to respond to our hails."

  "That doesn't look like only chaos," Wilkes observed from the back. "They look terrified. Why are they banging on the door to the next bay?"

  Jenkins trotted across the landing bay floor to where a knot of eleven crew had gathered around the sliding blast door entrance to the adjoining bay. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

  An ensign from the Cormorant turned to look at him. "The ship is trying to kill us," she said, pointing through the bay door. We have six people trapped on the other side. They can't get out and the air is being emptied from the compartment. If we don't get to them soon they'll suffocate!"

  "Or die from decompression," added another ensign from Kongo helpfully. The first ensign glared at him.

  "The Morrigan did this?" Jenkins asked.

  "Yes," the Cormorant ensign said, "she's awake now, and she thinks we are trying to hurt her! Do something!"

  Navy types always loved to order marines around. "Do we have communication with your people on the other side?"

  "Yes," said the ensign from Kongo, who was furiously tapping into the codelock on the side of the door. "What do you want me to tell them?"

  "Tell them that if they want to live, to get as far away as possible, find cover, and turn away from the door. Got that?"

  The young man nodded. "Okay. They're backing up now."

  Jenkins nodded. "These doors are a half-meter thick at least. Cass, you're up. Shaped-charge should do it. A hole will give them oxygen. We''ll use plasma cutters to make a bigger hole once they have air."

  "Yes, sir," answered Private Cass. "One hole, coming up." He began to unlimber his RLG-9 Wolfbite rocket launcher from its shoulder mount.

  The seven marines quickly withdrew to a safe distance from the blast door. The crewmen looked at the marines, now standing thirty meters from the door, then back to the door. They were naval crew, but they seemed to have no inkling that they were clustering around a target that was about to be struck by a rocket-launched grenade filled with a shaped-charge magnapex warhead that could burn through three meters of titanium alloy. The beauty of the shaped-charge was that it channeled its explosion in a single, tightly-focused direction, sending a stream of superhot gases and molten metal burning through the target. What it lacked in area effect it made up for in penetrative power.
That didn't mean that there wasn't any danger at all off to the sides.

  "Should we move?" asked the Kongo ensign.

  "Only if you prefer living to dying," Jenkins said. "We're using a lethal round, you see."

  The sheepish ensign turned to the others in his concerned knot and began to to urge them to move away from the door. "Will the rocket be a danger to the people on the other side?" he asked.

  "Did you tell them to get back, and take cover?"

  "Yes."

  "Then no," Jenkins said. "The bay on the other side is as big as this one. The jet will dissipate before it can harm them."

  "Any day now, please," Cone said. "Before we use up the oxygen on this side of the door too."